Whaling: A High Seas Culture Clash

The use of culture as propaganda has been a long term strategy of the Japanese whaling complex. Whilst Amber has addressed a wide series of arguments as to why Japan should be allowed to resume commercial whaling, I would like to address just one issue, the link between history and culture.

Despite what the Japanese Government would have the Japanese people believe, before 1900, whale meat was originally eaten in only a few isolated, coastal areas of this island nation. The technique used to catch the whales was a traditional one, not the huge factory ships and explosive harpoons used by the USA, Norway and others in the past. The coastal communities would preserve their hard-caught whale meat in wooden barrels with salt or soy sauce for later consumption. They caught around 200 whales per year, enough to eat and survive in their isolated villages.

With the introduction of the Norwegian style of hunting and its advanced equipment, the catch quickly rose to commercial proportions, at around 1500 whales per year. However records show that consumption did not keep pace with supply. So where did all this excess meat and whale products go, and why did the so called ‘lovers of whale meat’ not soak up this extra supply?

The basic answer is that whale meat was not popular with its potential consumers, and the meat simply went to waste. But let us look at the history of the development of the whaling industry to see what really happened.

Two historical incidents helped to encourage the growth in Japanese whaling. In the late 19th century, Japan was coming out of its long term self-imposed exile and set about ‘catching up with the Western nations’, in what is known as the ‘Meiji Restoration’, following governmental ‘fact-finding’ missions to the west. One technological breakthrough the Japanese seized upon was the ability to preserve the meat, that was introduced by the French in 1910. Mr Oku, a Japanese business man, on returning from Norway formed the ‘Japan Deep Sea Fishing Company’ with another entrepreneur, one Mr Yamada. It was this company that built the first purpose-built whaling vessel soon after, the Nagaoku Maru, a 122 ton steamer. Suddenly Japan was lifted into commercial whaling in a big way. In 1903 the company changed its name to Toyo Fishing and began its initial whaling activities off the Korean coast seeking gray whales. With the success of these far sea whaling activities the company introduced whaling into Kochi and Wakayama Prefectures around 1906.

At this time whaling was being encouraged by the politicians of the Meiji era, to help counter Russian whaling along the Korean coast. After the Russo-Japanese war started, the Japanese arrested all the available Russian whaling ships, and began using them for themselves. The military dominated government encouraged further expansion of the industry and started canning in Korea for food for the army. Canned foods such as salmon, crab and herring were introduced but the whale meat was still not popular with the Japanese people. The government began to export the more expensive canned fish to Europe for hard currency, while the cheaper whale meat was consumed at home. A considerable amount was given to Japanese soldiers in the Russo-Japan war.

The four main coastal whaling companies that had emerged at the turn of the century were merged in 1909 to form a government-influenced monopoly company, TOYO HOGEI. The new company exploited the seized Russian factory ships working the Korean coast. Meanwhile the traditional whaling methods were squeezed out by competition, or simply suspended in favour of the more commercially favourable new technologies.

As Japan drifted politically in the 1930s elements of the Kwantung Army attacked the Chinese garrison in Mukden and so initiated the army’s expansionist phase of the Twentieth Century. They invaded Northern China/Manchuria and established the area as a colony (Manchuko). The people of the area were fed the cheapest food that the Japanese could supply – whale meat. Toyo Hogei continued to exploit its privileged position in the market and steadily grew as it absorbed all the small companies that stood in its way. In 1934, the company acquired the Antarctic whaler the To Nam Maru, and so started the exploitation of the Antarctic populations of great whales. By 1936, political pressure and a possible world war, led to the two top whaling companies merging to become the new company that still bears the same name today NIPPON SUISAN (officially formed in 1937).

At a similar time that Toyo Hogei was formed, TOSA HOGEI (Tosa Whaling) acquired a Norwegian ship (1907). Tosa similarly grew under the auspices of pro-whaling military influence, merging as it grew, swallowing smaller more traditional whaling operations. It operates today under the name of Taiyo Gyogyo.

Between the years of 1935 and 1939 the Japanese Government, desperate for foreign currency, continued to export all its whale oil from the Antarctic-caught whales to Europe. Revenues from these sales grew by a factor of 40 times, whilst the earnings from canned whale meat increased by only 7 times during the same period. The Japanese had now to face up to the squeeze they had placed on their few remaining traditional whalers, and to maintain the small whale meat market that still existed they prevented the Antarctic whalers from importing their own meat by-products. The meat was treated as waste and simply dumped into the sea.

During the war this practice came under increasing criticism and so, in 1938, whaling practices were modified and the dumping ceased. The production of canned whale meat then increased at a tremendous rate to cater for the change in the law. However, the import of the meat into Japan was still banned and so the canned whale meat was shipped to the growing Japanese colonies and the ever expanding overseas military operations. It begins to be obvious here that the growth in modern Japanese commercial whaling closely shadows Japanese military expansion and not demand by the Japanese people. As the military grew in strength, so the commercial whaling companies grew in political influence and financial size. The war did begin to stretch resources and we now see the formation of the research centre (1941) by Kenkichi Nakabe, The Nakabe Science Research Centre. (Nakabe later became president of Taiyo Gyogyo). In 1942, it was rebuilt by the government and was later moved out of Tokyo after American bombers began their successful bombing of the capital.

The end of the war brought a sudden change of circumstances for the whaling companies with the removal of their former political/military allies. What at first looked like the end of whaling was quickly reversed however, with the encouragement of the American Military Government to resume Antarctic whaling. 1946 saw the formation of a new research centre GERUI KENKYUJO (Gerui = cetacean), in Tokyo. It was tasked with developing synthetic whale meat products and also basic whaling technology.

The austerity that the end of the war brought to Japan meant that the relatively cheap whale meat was eaten in greater quantities. It was, however, still unpopular as it looked dark, and following freezing it was invariably full of blood and never fresh. Whilst its nutritional value was the same as pork or beef, the mass consumption of whale meat lasted only a few years after the war due to its unpopularity. In the early 1950s there was even an excess of whale meat with a lack of consumers. Canned whale meat did become popular in the north of Japan amongst the rice farmers of the Tohoku region who regarded it as a cheap, convenience food. The only true commercial demand was for the raw meat, from the wealthy Kanto and Kansai regions (Tokyo and Osaka).

The year of 1953, with the growing problems of lack of customers, saw Taiyo Gygyo take over the development of synthetic whale meat products. New research was desperately commissioned to find new commercial uses for the whale meat. This resulted in a huge campaign to the Japanese public. Pamphlets were distributed to housewives. Recipes with butter, miso or oil were introduced by the whaling companies; even school lunches were targeted. A traditional fishpaste sausage, kamaboko, was substituted for by a whale meat sausage (50% whale meat). Recipes with onions, spices, lard were all tried. Special wrappings were made to preserve the whale meat without freezing to avoid the problems of the dark, bloody meat on unfreezing. This campaign actually succeeded in increasing sales. The boom of the post war years acted as a ready market to absorb the cheap source of needed food. It was interesting to see a very similar campaign now being launched in Japan in 1993. This time, however, it was not about feeding a country
back from the brink of poverty and hunger.

All the whale meat caught by Japan at this time was consumed by the domestic market, and as demand grew there was a reciprocal growth in production. The foreign companies who had whaled for mainly oil products gradually lost business under the Japanese expansion. By 1961 Japan was importing whale meat and even re-exporting to the UK to supply the pet food industry. As domestic demand grew even further this export was ceased to supply home grown markets. In 1963, Nippon Suisan bought the British whaler ‘Southern Harvester’, to ensure enough whale meat for sausage production. The period 1960-1964 saw Japan purchase four whaling vessels from overseas and also the first concern that the number of whales were decreasing. We must point out that this was no conservation-minded ethic raising its head, but a purely commercial worry about supply and demand.

Japanese demand for sausages peaked in 1962 but only three years later, with other preferred products more easily obtainable, the demand had fallen by 20%. The richer members of Japanese society turned to real ham and pork sausages whilst the poorer farmers could only afford the whale meat sausages that they had been encouraged to eat. Here we begin to see a problem for the Japanese whaling interests. The companies had heavily invested in the early 1960s, in mass production and automation both in the factories and the whaling ships. However, the whale meat product had a very low retail price and so production had to be maintained at maximum to cover rising costs. As demand fell off, the smaller companies turned to mackerel and shark fishing to supplement their whaling, but the larger companies were determined to continue the industry at any cost.

Whaling had cut into the minke stocks and all but destroyed the sperm whale stocks (both lay outside the then IWC regulations and controls). The problem now lay in the fact that sources were becoming even more scarce for a consumption that was decreasing as rapidly as the whales themselves.

In 1975, the Japanese Government once again intervened to recreate a new larger whaling company from the smaller struggling operations. Through retirement, resignation and transfers the industry emerged in 1976 as the Nihon Kyodo Hogei Co Ltd. to continue whaling in the Antarctic for minke and sperm whales. The company underwent a further name change to Kyodo Senpaku and it is this organization that continued to whale in the name of ‘science’ after the adoption of the 1985 IWC moratorium.

Thus we see that Japan may have had, at one time, a right to claim that it had within it’s borders a few subsistence whalers, but those communities long ago fell under the control of commercial enterprise and pursuit of profit. What we have today bears no resemblance to the whalers of two centuries ago. Japan is no longer a traditional whaling country but a nation that has a small number of whaling interests that seek to maintain the industry for whatever interests they hold. Whaling in Japan has nothing to do tradition, it is about the internal maintenance of political power and associated commercial profit.

The relationship between the whaling companies and the fishing communities is well worth further consideration. Today, whalers are not the most popular people in Japan, with fishing scoops regularly avoiding the whaling vessels. In Abashiri in Hokkaido, the locals protested the positioning of a whale meat processing plant close to the town and main port. The case of Abashiri is well documented (Abashiri, Japan’s Small-Scale Whaling Fujiwara Eiji, 1991).

The cultural argument for eating whale meat begins to fall apart if we consider that it is not ‘necessary to eat whale meat to be Japanese’. There is no loss of cultural identity with the loss of whale meat. It is no longer a ‘staple’ in Japan, and really it never was. In fact, the eating of whale meat is really associated with a isolated traditional type of whaling long subsumed under commercial enterprise.

This ‘industry’ should not be confused with ‘cultural identity’. The whole debate about culture is a smoke-screen behind which to defend a profitable industry and power-broking positions. Whaling was very regional and had only been in existence for about 100 years when the whaling moratorium came into place. This ancient whaling with net and harpoons was destroyed by Japanese industry when it adopted Norwegian-style industrial whaling techniques and made the whole thing into a business. According to Shigeki Komori of WWF-Japan the conservation of whales is a culture in its own right. “In some parts of Japan, whales were worshipped as Gods that brought fish. No one hunted whales in such places”.

Amber, I would be happy to address some of the other issues you raise, such as the legality of Japanese whaling, but please let me know.

best wishes

Chris

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